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Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 17:51:53 +0000
From: Charlotte Utting <[log in to unmask]>
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Subject: [WASAN] FW: Thursday Digest (6/26): From the Desert,
     a Wellspring of Ancient Manuscripts



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From: [log in to unmask]
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 07:01:48 EDT
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Thursday Digest (6/26): From the Desert, a Wellspring of Ancient
Manuscripts

washingtonpost.com
From the Desert, a Wellspring of Ancient Manuscripts

By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 25, 2003; Page C01

"Our ceilings are not very tight," says Abdel Haidara of the houses in his
native Mali.

He's talking in Arabic at a Monday afternoon lecture at the Library of
Congress in one of the library's more ceremonial rooms. Curiously, there is
sign of what looks like a little water damage above an arch window behind
him.

In a big library with small problems, he's talking about small libraries
with big problems. Haidara is the curator of the Mamma Haidara Commemorative
Library, a private holding of some 5,000 ancient manuscripts in Timbuktu,
the legendary city of Mali. Over the 13 generations that his family has held
this trove of manuscripts, water damage has been only one of a Jobian list
of predations. There was a serious fire, and a building collapse, and in
1973, a drought in Mali that so stressed the already impoverished people
that pilferage became a serious threat. And throughout the ages, dating back
to the 16th century when his "first grandfather" started the collection,
there has been a long and debilitating war with insects, heat and dust.

But the collection has survived, and in conjunction with the Smithsonian
Folklife Festival, which begins today (and includes a focus on Mali), a
small sample of texts from the Haidara library is on view at the Library of
Congress. The delicate pages were not bound, but stacked and stored in
tooled-leather cases. Documents on display, selected from some 23 books
brought to the Library of Congress to be microfilmed, include works on
astronomy, mathematics, Islamic law and business ethics. The script is
Arabic, but with a variety of calligraphic styles, and in some cases ample
marginalia that testify to their long use in everyday study.

It is an unprepossessing exhibit, and like most exhibits of documents, there
is something inert about pages of old script lying under glass. The
collection, however, is anything but inert, and is at the center of great
scholarly excitement. A wall text says these manuscripts may lead to a
reevaluation not just of African history, but of world history.

"What's been happening in Mali in the last decade has been an emergence of
information that heretofore was previously unknown," says Chris Murphy, an
area specialist in the library's African and Middle Eastern division who
helped curate the exhibition. That includes information about local
kingdoms, local medicine, local literature including epics and poems, and
firsthand accounts of the trade in slaves, salt and gold that made Timbuktu
a center of the Islamic world to rival Cairo and Istanbul.

There's a lazy habit, among people who think history began with the Greeks
and ended with Americans, of thinking of African "civilization" as a thin
ribbon of cities and cultures running along the Mediterranean Sea and down
the Nile. Conveniently, it is the same Africa that was most engaged with
Europe and the Near East. But that Africa was also intimately connected with
Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa. And cities like Timbuktu, where an important
overland trade route joined canals leading to the Niger River, weren't
backwaters or outposts of North Africa; they were the centers of their own
civilizations, which reached even further into the center of the continent.

Although they are written in Arabic script and many of them deal with
Islamic law and religion, the Timbuktu libraries aren't filled merely with
copies of Arabic texts that circulated throughout the Islamic world. Rather,
they contain a full, rich and particular history of another Africa, with its
own kingdoms, literature and history. This Africa is not lost to the
vagaries of oral history, but it remains mostly unknown. Little of its
history has been translated.

Individuals, governments and outside agencies have begun to focus efforts on
preserving an estimated 1 million or more ancient documents scattered around
western Africa. In Timbuktu alone there are some 22 private family
libraries, few (if any) benefiting from modern preservation. In the environs
of Timbuktu, as many as 100 different families hold ancient documents, and
stories are told of more nomadic families, farther afield, that have buried
boxes of priceless texts and then moved on, never to unearth them.

If there was a standard way to graph the importance of a cultural object
multiplied by its vulnerability to destruction, the manuscripts of Mali
would be off the charts. Mahmoud Abdou Zouber, an adviser to Malian
President Amadou Toumani Toure (who was on hand to celebrate the opening of
the Library of Congress exhibition yesterday), has been working to save
these texts since the 1970s. He approached one family, which held an
important trove, in 1978; not until 1982 was he ushered in to see the
collection. After a brief glimpse, he was asked to come back in a week. When
he did, the door to the library had been walled over. That was, he believes,
the family's way of showing its reluctance to deal with government officials
who, they fear, will take their holdings from them. Suspicion prevails.

"It is rare to find owners of manuscripts who are open to approach," says
Zouber.

Haidara, who was inspired by his father to take an active interest in
preserving his family's holdings, including fundraising and cataloguing,
says many families aren't aware of the immense importance of what they hold.
Manuscripts are passed on, generation to generation, because of their
sentimental and emotional importance, like quilts or heirlooms. But often no
one in the family can actually read them, and storage is haphazard.

Timbuktu, once a teeming city of merchants and traders and a center of
scholarship, is now a dusty town of some 20,000 people. It was founded in
the 11th century, and was central to a succession of peoples and empires --
the Tuareg, Mali, Songhai -- before Morocco sent soldiers overland to sack
it late in the 16th century. It was known to Europeans, but so remote as to
seem legendary. Not until the 19th century did Europeans return with
extensive firsthand accounts of it. Even a Mali tourist Web site says, "Many
are surprised to find it actually exists."

"It's like Rust Belt cities in the Midwest," says the Library of Congress's
Murphy. "They once had great cultural institutions."

A 1998 visit to Timbuktu by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. (to work
on the documentary "Wonders of the African World") attracted attention to
the plight of the Mali manuscripts. And that attention helped Haidara raise
funds to build a small library with better storage facilities, a reading
room and computers. But Haidara's efforts remain the exception and there's a
sense of urgency among scholars and curators.

"The needs are simply immense," says Murphy. A massive amount of information
produced by human beings is at risk, he points out.

Where that information leads is anyone's guess. But a wealth of insights
into how Islamic law and local customs coexisted has immediate political
relevance; and the existence of untranslated literature, local poetry and
epics appeals to the most fundamental curiosity of man: to know each other's
stories.

Ancient Manuscripts from the Desert Libraries of Timbuktu will be on display
in the South Gallery of the Great Hall in the Library of Congress's
Jefferson Building through Sept. 3. The library, on First Street SE across
from the U.S. Capitol, is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Saturday. Admission
is free. For more information visit www.loc.gov/exhibits.
<http://www.loc.gov/exhibits>
--------------------------------
Men make counterfeit money; in many more cases, money makes counterfeit
men. -Sydney J. Harris, journalist and author (1917-1986)
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Next WASAN meeting is Wednesday, June 25, 2003. Location: Safeco Jackson Street Center, E Main St, between 23 & 24th, Suite 200.
7:00 pm Business meeting.
7:30 pm Zimbabwean Film "Jit", followed by a discussion.
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